Archaeologist
As
an archaeologist, Jim has worked on land and at sea, on sites thousands
of years old and sites as recent as the beginning stages of the
Cold War. That has meant working around the world in dozens of countries,
and yes, on the "Seven Seas" (plus a few other bodies
of water). Looking back, Jim is reminded of how lucky he is, and
how many great experiences, and wonderful opportunities have happened
- as well as how many superb people he's been privileged to work
with and how many friends have entered his life thanks to countless
surveys, excavations and lab work.
 Jim's
comprehensive article on the discovery and history of Explorer
has been published in the International Journal of Nautical Archaeology
(Online Early).
Click here to read more.
Link courtesy of the IJNA.
Click
here
to view photos and more on Explorer.
What's Jim working on now? In his own
words...
This is a busy time (when is it not?)
with a fair amount of writing, meetings, travel, and analysis of fieldwork.
On the writing front, I am working with the editors at the University
of California Press, who will be publishing my Gold Rush San Francisco
research, the result of 29 years of occasional work amidst the buried
ships of downtown San Francisco. Gold Rush Port: The Maritime
Archaeology of the San Francisco Waterfront will be published
early in 2009. Meanwhile, I have also completed, and my Canadian publishers
are hard at work producing the popularly written Khubilai Khan’s
Navy: In Search of a Lost Fleet.
I am now completing an 80,000-word book, tentatively entitled Iron,
Gunpowder and Pearl: The Incredible Saga of a Long-Lost Civil War
Submarine, for Texas A&M University Press. I have also started
on an illustrated book for Osprey Publishers of London and New York
on the early development and testing of atomic weapons, with a special
emphasis on the tests at Bikini Atoll, which was the subject of an
earlier book, Ghost Fleet.
After the second full field season and the completion of the report
on Sub Marine Explorer, we submitted it to the Government
of Panama along with an assessment of the sub’s rate of deterioration,
the risks it faces, and options for its preservation. That also included
a just completed article on the sub’s corrosion by a team led
by Dr. Don Johnson of the University of Nebraska, who joined the 2006
field season to study Explorer. I also worked closely with
friend and architectural draftsman John McKay to complete a detailed
set of interpretive reconstruction drawings of Explorer,
which will be featured in the book and also go online soon on a new
Explorer webpage under development with the NOAA Office of
Ocean Exploration, sponsors of the 2006 expedition.
In late February, I returned from a three-week field season in Panama,
graciously supported and sponsored by the Waitt Institute for Discovery
(WID). We surveyed the approaches to the Rio Chagres – an area
rich in history, including a central role in trans-isthmian traffic
during the California Gold Rush. We then deployed to the Pacific for
a week at Isla San Telmo, where colleagues from WID, Woods Hole Oceanographic
Institute, and my friends and colleagues Clyde Smith, John McKay and
Fritz Hanselmann completed the drawings of Explorer as it
is, surveyed the waters around the island with multi-beam sonar and
magnetometer, and, thanks to the work of Erich Horgan of Woods Hole,
completed a biological assessment of Explorer (as it is now
a habitat for marine life), as well as the surrounding pearl beds.
My full-time work with the Institute
of Nautical Archaeology has shifted with my new role as President
(since April, 2008) and more travel throughout the United States and
abroad, including an upcoming trip to Turkey, Algeria, Tunisia, and
Spain. This year of 2008 promises to be busy for the Institute of
Nautical Archaeology and for me, with more field work planned for
Panama and Libya for me, and INA projects in Vietnam, Canada’s
Yukon, Spain, Turkey, Egypt, and Cyprus to name a few.
Identifying
the Remains of the Whaler Candace
Since the 1970s, Jim has been involved in digs on buried Gold Rush-era
ships in San Francisco – like Candace, a recent find.
Most of these projects have been with Jim's good friend Allen Pastron’s
firm Archeo-Tec, who pioneered these types of digs and who have
literally exhumed and documented the early history of San Francisco.
Learn how Jim carries out his CSI-like archaeological detective
work to come to a final conclusion about the ship's identity.
Read about
the Candace here.
A
look at Jim's archaeological experience close up.
Want to know more about Jim's archaeological history? His experience
covers over 32 years and counting! He's worked for the US National
Park Service, the Vancouver Maritime Museum, Eco-Nova Productions
and much more. He's travelled the world to work on shipwrecks, including
some very famous ones!
Click here
for a look at Jim's archaeological resume.
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